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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

X-Treme Knitting and the latest quilting projects

You might say I have a bit of an extreme personality.....

When I was into running, it had to be marathons. Then triathlons.When we had kids, it was 3 in 3 years.The year we bought our house, I also bought a dental practice and cottage. And renovated them all to extremes. With 3 kids aged 3 and under.When I got into quilting....well, you have seen the results of that. (my husband is relieved that fabric, though expensive, costs less than real estate)

So, last week I decided I wanted to learn about knitting.

And I have already made 2 hats ;)

The first one is pure crap-o-lah. Intended for The Middle Child to match this scarf, I learned some valuable things.

1. Chunky yarn is not worsted weight. Which I knew. I was just in denial.2. Bigger is not (always) better. 4 inches means 4 inches, not 6 inches- or else it will fall over the eyes....to about the chin.

Anyhoo, it is a tad big (even for an adult), but The Middle Child loves it anyhow, and proceeded to wear it in the house all day with the rim rolled up, along with her prized Fruit Loop necklace, bathing suit and cover up (even though it is minus 30 again...I guess denial runs in the family). Isn't she cute?Naturally, this sorta-failure prompted me to start another, about 5 minutes later, with the same pattern but different even chunkier yarn, to test my math/patience/sanity.

This one is made for Last But Not Least, and uses a gorgeous wool/acrylic combo picked up at a local wool store (I am in love!). It features orange, of course, blended with her second and third ranked favorite colors, pink and purple (in case you were curious).I am redeemed! Perfect fit. The yarn was a dream to work with, it came together quickly, and my daughter LOVES it. Asked to wear it to bed the first night. Tells everyone she sees that her Mommy made it. Adorable! And she informed me it works great for catching snowflakes on her tongue :-) It originally had a pom pom, but LBNL would have none of that. Too babyish for her mature 3-year-old self, ya know! "Can you cut that off right now?" O-kayyyyyy. Can't leave Big G out....he has a pretty cool knit hat, too, though it is just bought from The Gap.Anyways, knitting was fun, will do more, but I have some stash calling my name...back to quilting! This Hello Betty jelly roll for my quilt for the postage stamp quilt along FINALLY arrived yesterday. The one bad thing about living up in Canada...usually 3+ weeks for fabric to arrive in the mail! I guess it will be a quilt-AFTER instead ;) Not sure how I feel about making a quilt like everyone else's...usually not much of a pattern girl, but I love those little squares and wanted to give it a try. I am alternating it with linen....this may just do me in. Do you know how hard it is to cut long strips of linen straight???Also starting a little something to auction for my daughter's preschool...more on that to come!

9 comments:

Love the hats! And your children are adorable! :) I go in cycles between knitting and quilting, although lately my knitting has taken the back seat for a while now. Good luck with your postage stamp quilt, I am almost half done. But, I know what you mean. I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to take part just because everyones will be the "same". Happy Sewing!

It's adorable that she wants to wear it anyway, though. And the second hat is tooooo cute!

I ended up jumping into the postage stamp quilt along, too. I'm using a yellow with Central Park for the front, and I'm going to do a lot of piecing with Central Park charms on the back. So I figure it will still be unique enough. ;) Now I just need to finish up a baby quilt so I can start on MY quilt!

OH, I can't wait to see your postage stamp quilt! I'm super behind too (just started sewing my strip sets on Monday night) and I don't have slow shipping to blame. Of course I got 5 sets done, then ran out of thread & have been snowed in so I can't get more!

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